I have been invited by Linda Leslie Brown to show my recent work exploring the topography of the ocean floor, DEEP TIME, as a guest artist at the Kingston Gallery in October, 2018.Linda, a member of the gallery, will be showing in the Main Gallery. The title of her exhibition, Plastiglomerate, is adopted from the name of a new substance created through heat fusion of plastic bits, sand, and other materials. It has been identified as a new form of rock said to be a geological marker of the Anthropocene era.

From the Press ReleaseGuest artist Phyllis Ewen presents Deep Time, sculptural collages inspired by the movement of the earth's surface. With scanned and altered sections of ocean floor maps, Ewen delves into the science of anthropogenic climate change and its effect on land and water. Her palette comes from the deep ocean mountains, valleys, and canyons of the ocean floor. During the process of creating this thought provoking body of work, Ewen's chroma darkened, reflecting the collective mood of increasing global ecological dangers. Melting glaciers and warming seas have affected the sea floor, disrupting evolutionary Deep Time with the significant human impact on the earth's geology and ecosystems. To create this work Ewen digitally modifies cartographic images of ocean floor maps plotted in the 1950s and 1960s by geologist Marie Tharp. Fragmenting and reassembling her source material, Ewen adds paint to form an imagined dimensional underwater topography. The depth and texture in these works are both illusion and reality. Magnetically attached layers reference the magnetic anomalies of the earth's tectonic plates on the ocean floor.

]]>Mon, 09 Jul 2018 16:23:02 GMThttp://www.phyllisewen.com/blog/summer-show-at-off-main-gallery-in-wellfleetI am pleased to be part of Off Main Gallery in Wellfleet MA, in its second season. Robert Shreefter, artist, and his partner, Wendy Luttrell, two of the people who opened the gallery in 2017, have reconfigured the gallery and made it stronger. They invited 9 other artists to be members of the gallery. Each artist will have a three-week solo show and otherwise have work in the main room during the season. My show opened on July 21 with a talk by each of us. THE OPENING WAS WELL ATTENDED AND ENTHUSIASTIC. I've included the announcement and the press release below. My imagery refers to Cape Cod, the eastern seacoast of the U.S., and the volatile terrain of the Reykjanes peninsula of Iceland. I'm showing dimensional landscapes and archival pigment prints.

"Our earth is not a stable entity; we live on its very mobile surface.The natural world is far from settled but ever changeable" From an essay by Ragna Sigurðardóttir for Við SjónarröndReykjanes Museum of Art 2017

From the Press Release

Ewen has chosen an apt title for her show: Flux & Flow.As the works on display make clear, the movement of the earth’s surface is a source of inspiration and imagery for her. She explores anthropogenic climate change and its effect on land and water: rising seas, drying rivers, shifting coastlines and volatile geothermal terrains. Her abstract landscapes refer to Cape Cod, the Eastern seacoast, and the Reykjanes peninsula of Iceland. Ewen’s palette includes umbers, ochers, crimson, and sienna with occasional blues and greys. Maps, photographs and charts are turned into sculptural collages, allowing us to imagine ourselves within a dimensional landscape.As she says, “To inhabit the world—or artwork—is an important way of understanding it.”

The Provincetown Banner publicized our exhibits with this ad.

]]>Wed, 28 Mar 2018 02:19:28 GMThttp://www.phyllisewen.com/blog/voyage-the-dark-ships-move-the-dark-ships-moveVoyage is a series of unique mixed media digital prints, with graphite, pastel, and paint. I begun this series, after visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. Voyage with the related series, Variations on Warming Oceans, comprise FOOTPRINTS.

FOOTPRINTS refer both to the impressions made over time by movement of the earth's tectonic plates and to the intrusion by humans that have further altered and shaped our evolving planet. I am looking at both our physical and social climates, the environments in which we live.Hidden behind these modified digital prints, are maps made by geologist Marie Tharp of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. I modify them first on my computer in Photoshop and then by hand, drawing with graphite, paint, and pastel. Through the layers, one can catch glimpses of the maps below. Although these maps are beautiful in and of themselves, they are evocative.The maps have allowed me to imagine what is happening or has taken place in the terrain below and the sea above.In Variations, I am looking at the seas in the context of human-induced climate change, I refer to the effects of warming waters and increased levels of methane that pose a great danger to our planet and our existence. In Voyage, I am considering the sea as a locus of migration -- the forced transport of human beings, as cargo, from Africa to North and South America through the 19th century, what is called ‘the middle passage’. The effects of this shameful history -- of the enslaved and the enslavers -- are still with us and poison our social climate.

This piece is included in PERSONAL GEOGRAPHIES, an exhibit at the Chandler Gallery in Cambridge, March 26-April 20, 2018.

"In DARK SHIP, Phyllis Ewen tells a very different story with a topographical map of the Atlantic Ocean overlaid with text about the Middle Passage. Though four continents are shown, only North America and Europe are labeled. Though a diagram of a ship is also shown, the hull is empty. This piece contrasts what is laid out visually, or mapped, with what is visually absent but present only in the text."

These are some of the others in the series, VOYAGE. More to come. Click on an image to Enlarge

In February 2017, I received an email from Mary Harding, the director of the George Marshall Store Gallery, asking to visit my studio. She was planning to show the work of Somerville artist, Wendy Prellwitz, and was looking for someone whose work would be a complement. She has a good curator's eye and could see that our work would go together very well. We each approach landscape in our own way, yet Mary -- and we --could see underlying relationships that would unify the exhibit. Mary had been referred to me by Bill Brayton, with whom I had shown a few months before in the exhibit, Inventing 3-D Landscapes.(See my first two blog posts.) and arrived at my studio with the exhibit already in mind. This is not my usual experience when a curator comes to my studio and a very welcome one. The studio visit was just confirmation that the work, in person, was what she had hoped for from looking at my website. A shout out to my photographer, Dean Powell and my website designer, Keyworth Graphics. Mary invited me to visit the gallery before agreeing to show there.

When I went to York the following month, I was impressed by the beauty of the site and location and I loved the gallery. The main space is large, airy, and well-proportioned, the smaller spaces well suited to showing a sole artist or small work . I saw the 2016-17 Winter Show; a diverse collection of art well arranged. It was easy to decide that, yes, I did want to exhibit there.

In May, Mary came to Somerville again and spent time with both Wendy and me. The three of us visited both studios while Mary took photographs and decided on the pieces she wanted us to bring to Maine. We decided on an exhibition title : IMPRINT. " an exhibition making visual and thematic connections with the work by boston-based artists Phyllis Ewen and Wendy Prellwitz and New Hampshire ceramicist David Ernster." zine.artscopemagazine.com/artscope-magazine-ongoing/

IMPRINT was installed beautifully. As you come in, my work is on the left side of the gallery, Wendy's on the right One of my pieces was on a short wall on Wendy's side facing toward the main area and so allowed a few across the gallery to the installation of the majority of my pieces. The art on the walls is paired with arrangements of ceramic pieces that most resonated with our work. A small vestibule at the entrance had a work by each of us and you looked ahead to the wall with the two framed pieces of mine. Mary Harding is a gifted curator and a genius at using the space to best present the artwork.

Phyllis Ewen‘s mixed-media artwork is a fusion of art and science with an emphasis on the organic quality of nature. Her sculptural drawings present an exploration of the effects of global warming, such as drying rivers and rising seas. This subtle commentary on politics, society, and nature is a common thread throughout her work, no matter the medium.www.georgemarshallstoregallery.com/phyllis-ewen-imprint/ Phyllis currently works in Somerville, Massachusetts at her studio in the Brickbottom Artist Building, of which she is a founding member.

The opening reception on July 15 was well attended - summer show. People wandered through the three exhibitions and out to the tents behind the gallery for food and drinks. Some of the gallery's 'regulars' had come in the days before to get a preview and both Wendy and I had sold a piece before the official opening. The ceramics continued to sell throughout the evening.

]]>Thu, 15 Jun 2017 20:02:08 GMThttp://www.phyllisewen.com/blog/orkney-beside-the-ocean-of-timeNOTES TO MYSELF In order to keep a record of my research, I will keep notes on this blog page.

This project, which I learned about at an exhibit at the Pier Art Center in Stromness, Orkney, is provocative and a different way to think about issues of climate change in connection with long-term natural changes in the landscape.

How do individuals and communities understand Deep Time? A relatively short-term perspective is dominant in contemporary societies as they face the complicated ongoing consequences of landscape change on every aspect of the human life, from agriculture and provision of food and energy to the protection of natural or cultural landscapes. A more holistic and deeper knowledge is required.

Orkney: Beside the Ocean of TimeThe action of the sea is constantly reshaping and reducing the islands of Orkney, eroding the glacial till and the underlying sandstone. A continuous gnawing, but with moments of drama that thrust deep time into the full glare of consciousness.At what temporal resolution should we view human activity? In order to understand the processes of change that shape the landforms under our feet and the resources upon which we depend, we need to think beyond the short-term time-horizons of rapid economic transactions and electoral cycles – the days, months or even years of human time. Yet, if we attempt to place human activity against the backdrop of Deep Time – the vast and gradual time-scale of Earth’s geological history – the temporal span of a human life almost disappears. This presents Science and Humanities scholars with a conceptual challenge. In attempting to understand how communities respond and adapt to landscape change, we need to understand the factors that shape attitudes and behaviour, and the present-day, immediate context in which people narrate their lives. Yet understanding change also requires a deeper time perspective, one that recognises long-term histories of human settlement, in the context of deep time ecological and geomorphological transformations. With short-term time horizons, the understanding of the places where we live can only be in relation to a single point in environmental history; as such we risk locking ourselves into single point assumptions. If we expand our time horizons, recognising environmental fluctuation, we will increase communities’ resilience to landscape change. How, then, might thinking with a Deep Time perspective destabilise present-day certainties, and how might researchers work together to expand the time-depth of their work while remaining sensitive to the temporality of human experience?This project brings together perspectives from Social Anthropology, Literature, Archaeology, Palaeoecology, and Geology, working in collaboration with Orcadian artist Anne Bevan and our project partner, The Pier Arts Centre, to find innovative ways to investigate and represent time-depth in landscape, using Orkney as a model. The project will develop and pilot an interdisciplinary methodology that will enable new insights into Orkney’s rich literary, geological, palaeoenvironmental and archaeological heritage, which is coupled with contemporary concerns over coastal erosion and the political and economic importance of energy generation.

Research Questions:1) How do communities respond and adapt to landscape change?2) What is the time-depth of people’s engagement with place?3) How do we make deep time visible?

]]>Mon, 17 Apr 2017 04:00:00 GMThttp://www.phyllisewen.com/blog/artists-resolve-a-collaboration-with-kimberly-darkArtists Re_Solve Artists ReSolve addresses the divisions intensifying in the United States and brought into focus by the recent presidential election. The site gives artists– writers, dancers, visual artists, performers, composers, etc.– a platform to connect and collaborate in response to the current environment. Working with another person through a creative process can spark curiosity, critique, and new re_solutions towards a common good.Artists Resolve put out a call to artists who wanted to respond to the current political situation by collaborating with another artist. It seemed like a good opportunity to engage with someone outside my usual circle and to use art in a more direct political statement. I responded to their solicitation to collaborate and was paired with the wonderful story teller, poet, and teacher who lives in Hawaii, yet travels the world sharing her knowledge, passions and good vibes, Kimberly Dark. We spoke by phone and she sent me three poems that I would interpret visually. I had at first thought that it would be fun and politically relevant to do a joint online action in support of Planned Parenthood. My wish was to find a way to invite people to donate to the organization and 'honor' Mike Pence who supported a nefarious bill that would defund Planned Parenthood and used his position to break a tie in the Senate.

I responded to their solitation to collaborate and was paired with the wonderful story teller, poet, and teacher who travels the world sharing her knowledge, passions and good vibes., Kimberly Dark. We spoke by phone and she sent me three poems that I would interpret visually. I had at first thought that it would be fun and politically relevant to do a joint online action in support of Planned Parenthood. My wish was to find a way to invite people to donate to the organization and 'honor' Vice President Mike Pense who had just broken a tie in the Senate, in support of a nefarious bill that would defund Planned Parenthood.

When I received the poems, I chose this one. It spoke to me of the way in which beauty is made significant when it becomes part of collective action-- in this case political action.

My thinking about the poem and imagery.how could your loveliness matter?Become part of the sparkling crowd.By becoming engaged, joining with others, being part of humankind, by acting. And here I took the liberty of deciding to act on behalf of Planned Parenthood, both because Mike Pence had just broke the tie and it was being unfunded, And because the poem seemed to be about women, about you and me, and us. AND I wanted to use pink in the piece, a color that I almost never use in my work about water and land, with earth and azure colors. Your action is part of you when you engage with others, like breathing, but takes work (sweating pretty)Placing your beauty –- into the humming, chaotic, breathing earth, stormy I envisioned the sea as a chaotic hurricane – the background images are of hurricane Sandy, which hit the East coast two years ago. And from another storm in the oceans.The individual self is small (irrelevant, insignificant) and doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things -- nature, the universe, however it’s defined, but becomes meaningful in action, commitment.resplendent in my insignificance. I changed the last line to 'resplendent ...[in] significance'

Kimberly and I submitted our collaboration to Artists Resolve.

]]>Thu, 06 Apr 2017 02:21:42 GMThttp://www.phyllisewen.com/blog/footprints-continuesOn Wednesday, several artist friends -- a group of women who regularly meet to discuss books, shows, and ideas -- came to the Creative Crossroads exhibit in the Brickbottom Gallery and to my studio to see and comment on some further pieces that I am working on in my studio. They asked about the process by which they were created, and the form of my collaboration with Elva and Soffia. I showed some of the original images I had created via Photoshop to illustrate the beginning of process of collaboration. I was encouraged to continue . I have some ideas for new imagery that I want to pursue --after going to a lecture at the Radcliffe Institute about ocean ecosystems --various plankton, whose behavior and genetic makeup are affected by global warming. Today, April 6, Janette Brossard, my good friend from Havana, came and we talked about wanting to see a huge wall of the panels, organized by hues and values. This is a goal for me.

Here is the way Variations 1-6 look in the Brickbottom Gallery.

I am very excited about my return to Iceland in September to work with Elva and Soffia at Hvitahús for a week. We will continue to expand our collaboration and talk about how to make visible aspects of global warming. Elva sent me 3 images of other panels from our collabotative piece, Horizon. She and I talked this morning about dates for my residency with her.

Elements like this would be included as part of a large wall that I hope we will create together.

]]>Fri, 10 Feb 2017 02:38:22 GMThttp://www.phyllisewen.com/blog/where-massart-and-brickbottom-meetI am excited about participating in this collective exhibition. It gives me the opportunity to show work from an ongoing project, FOOTPRINTS. For this showing, I have selected a grid of six 11"x 17" mixed media panels. The piece is inspired by topographical maps of the ocean floor, first created by geologist, Marie Tharp in the 1950's. I used images found on NASA, Columbia University websites, among others. Modified first on my computer using Photoshop; and when printed, with graphite and pastels. The texts, equations, and images of methane molecules, rising seas and temperatures that I have added refer to the effects of global warming on the oceans.

CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE

FOOTPRINTS: Variations on a collaboration with Soffia Sæmundsdóttir and Elva Hreidarsdottir, May-November 2016A version of the collaborative piece was shown at DUUS, Reykjanes Art Museum in Keflavik, Iceland,November 15, 2016 - January 15, 2017. Our collaboration will continue.

CREATIVE CROSSROADS celebrates the artistic overlap between Massachusetts College of Art & Design faculty and alumni and the Brickbottom Artist Association (BAA) membership. Twenty-eight artists are represented. Known as MassArt, Massachusetts College of Art and Design is a publicly funded college of visual and applied art founded in 1873. It is one of the oldest art schools, the only publicly funded free-standing art school in the United States, and was the first art college in the United States to grant an artistic degree. I taught at the college for many years and continue my connection through friends still teaching there. I am delighted to be exhibiting with these artists and others that I know from Brickbottom in Somerville MA, where I have my studio.

Inga Þórey, our curator placed our work: My 3-dimensional collages at one end to the left as you entered the gallery, Soffia's large charcoal drawings on the long wall, her scrolls in a vitrine Elva's prints next to Soffia's drawings and toward the far end where, in a recess, Inga installed our collaborative piece. Two short walls, perpendicular to the window wall, the vitrine and a pedestal broke up the space and added rhythm.

CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Above and Below the HorizonSoffia, like many island inhabitants, is focused on the horizon and in much of her painting work, she places herself on the ground looking directly out. This puts her and us in a strong and solid place vis a vis our surroundings. When Soffia became interested in Marie Tharp's maps of the ocean floor, she first drew this underwater vision as a journey-story on scrolls, where one can imagine a small Soffia traveling across under water to Places Unknown. Only a part of the story is visible, the rest is rolled up. The position of the artist and the ‘reader’ is on the bottom of the sea looking out as if, even here, we are looking at a horizon. In powerful charcoal drawings, Hidden Landscapes , our sea bed exploration is enlarged to life size.

While Soffia stands and looks; Elva sits down to touch and feel the earth's crust. Elva pays close attention to the surface of the earth: the textures and lines of lava fields, mosses, and rocks in her homeland. She conveys them in lovely evocative prints. Often the images are small honing in on a microscopic detail; while in the series of six larger collographs Written By Nature, our view is expanded. Elva uses elements from the earth to create her matrices, adhering sand and other material to her metal plates. Inspired by our collaboration, she asked me to bring sand from Cape Cod so that she could use the sand from the Reykjanes peninsula and sand from across the sea on the New England Coast. In this way, her work and mine reference each other in nuanced ways. Four of Elva's small collographic plates were exhibited on a pedestal allowing visitors to the exhibit to see and understand her process.FOR WRITING ON MY WORK, SEE PREVIOUS POST

Our opening reception on November 11 was well attended. A local painter had an exhibit in another gallery at the museum and a cultural award was given to a choirmaster from Keflavik where the museum is located. Before the galleries were opened a folk group played, we were all introduced, and a youth choir sang. There were between 500-600 people in the museum that evening.

Two days later Elva, Sofia, and I gave talks about our work to an audience of 30+ people, more than usually attend I was told. I spoke first in English, the two Icelandic artists in Icelandic and then in English Soffia and I talked about our collaboration. There were questions asked and much interest in our work. I was introduced to a friend of Elva's a geologist who was interested in my work about Reykjanes and shared her knowledge of the relationship between the geothermal plant and the changes taking place in Gunnuhiver. I have to get in touch with her to continue that dialogue. The museum produced a beautiful catalogue with a CV and four pages of images for each artist, images from our collaboration, and distance shots of the installations in the museum. We received national attention. On November 11, the morning of our opening an article with photographs about our show was published in the Morgenbladid. We were featured on the nightly news on November 22 www.ruv.is/sarpurinn/ruv/tiufrettir/20161122And the university website had a long review of the exhibit. All this was wonderful, but most important is that I have two friends for life.

With a year to prepare for the exhibit, I began thinking about what I wanted to show; how to represent myself as an artist from across the ocean, inspired by the icelandic landscape, but also located within my own sphere. I have for the past ten years been involved in thinking about global warming and the footprints that humans have made on an already changing terrain. Using maps and photographs, modified in Photoshop and printed digitally; I had been creating 3-dimensional collages about the changing coastline of New England, focusing on the beaches of Cape Cod.I chose two pieces, Liminal Break 1 and Restless Sand 2 to include in the and two pieces that refered to the geothermal landscape on Reykjanes, where the museum is located. These are titled Cauldron 2 and Cauldron 3. I also wanted to create two large installations; one using images taken from the patterns in the sand of the cape when the tide has ebbed and the other using the colors of the land and steam that I'd seen at Gunnuhiver in 2014.

CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE

I put aside the beginnings of the Reykjanes piece, that I'd begun in the fall of 2014 to concentrate on the installation about Cape Cod, where I'd altered the colors of the beach sand patterns into yellows, ochres, blues and greens. I started three times, unsatisfied and discarding each attempt, until finally I found elements that worked. I used some images to locate the more abstract elements, see below, as being on a beach with dunes, paths, ocean, and sky. I enjoyed playing with scale, the abstract patterns - closely observed - becoming dominent in size, with the locating images smaller and taken from a distance. At the same time, then, the viewer is looking out and down, the movement of eyes replicating the movement of the land. Wind and water alter the coastlines and I want the viewer to experience the movement of this land.

This installation was not completed until It was hung in the museum. I needed to see what space it would occupy and how I wanted it to look in situ. I knew that I wanted the piece to hang away from the wall with the more abstract elements (as above) further away from the wall than the elements that showed location. I chose to use magnets on steel screws of different dimensions to create a sense of movement. Receiving advice from friends Gene Turitz and David Martin, i attached washers and small discs to the back of the pieces. These discs lined up with the screws on which we put small strong magnets. Teddi, who helped me install this piece on the second day, had fun with the process so we both had fun. The piece is called Undertow: Cape Cod. I consider it a work-in-progress and will show it in different configurations in the future. One opportunity will be in the Inside/Out gallery run by the Somerville Art Council in June 2017. The image below shows the wall at the museum with Undertow: Cape Cod.

I knew what the installation, Reykjanes: Gunnuhiver's Ghost, would look like before it left my studio. It was to be a tryptich and I had had planned very carefully, the spacing between the three sections and the depth of earth's crust that I wanted to express. I bought screws of 1", 2.5", 3", and 4" so that the volatility of the geothermal landscape it refered to would be felt by those looking at the piece. It was, as installed, also about 10 ft across. It was much harder to install and was frustrating to Halli who was helping me. Because the sections were heavier than that of Undertow, I had over-estimated how many magnets and screws would be needed. I'd been encouraged to hang it as if it might be jostled or pushed by visitors to the museum, so was over-careful. I had pushed myself to create work of greater complexity and size than I usually do. That I chose to do this under a deadline was something I have to re-think for the future, I was quite stressed in the months leading up to October when I had to ship the work to Iceland. But the reason I keep doing what I do is because I like to challenge myself and continue to develop new ideas and new ways of expressing thse ideas. In the end, the stress was worth it.This piece was greatly admired and I felt successful. Gunnuhiver's Ghost has been acquired by the museum. It couldn't be in a more appropriate collection.